Saturday, 23 February 2013

Shut Me Up

This should mark the last attempt at a subscriber drive for a while. However, cringeworthy though this may be, i do stand by what i say in it:

Click to tweet: http://clicktotweet.com/x89NH

I could look at this as a sextuple dip recession in my YouTube views. There are six points at which that line starts to go downwards. If i were the media and that was a graph of economic growth, i would call that a sextuple dip recession. I would also shout that from the rooftops and as a result, everyone would get nervous, hang on to their dosh and the recession would get worse.

However, this is not the economy, i am not the media and i do not regard that graph as a sextuple dip recession, partly because i've been here before. A couple of years after i started up as a herbalist, i was looking at a graph like that and found it very depressing. Then i realised that it meant absolutely nothing. If you're trying to listen to something very quiet above a background hiss, you may well end up thinking you can hear things which aren't there. This is probably how electronic voice phenomenon works. People listen to hissing on an FM analogue radio and end up imagining voices. If i take that graph too seriously, i will end up imagining that the videos i'm making influence it strongly. However, in reality i'm not at the stage where i can tell what difference it makes because i haven't got enough subscribers. This is where you come in.

At the moment, i have no idea if my videos are any good or not because i haven't got enough views to get me above the noise level of my channel. You want there to be good videos on YouTube, and i want to make good videos. We both want the same thing. We can get to this common goal very easily. You can do it right now: subscribe and watch the videos on this channel once you've subscribed, like and share them if you like them and if you dislike them, tell me why.

My immediate goal is to get to 144 subscribers, but i don't just want you to subscribe. I can't tell directly if you are personally watching my videos, so what i'm going to do is this. I will make a note of everyone who subscribes from now until i get 144 subscribers. When i get there, i will wait for a week. Last week i got 1213 views. If i get more than 1900 views in the seven-day period after i get to 144, i think it's a fair assumption that the videos i'm making are keeping pace with what you want to see. At the end of that period, when the subs may have gone above 144, i will choose a random person from now until that point, ask them to send me their address and post them a copy of my two books 'Here Be Dragons' and 'You Could've Thought Of That', for free. I also want to remind you in the meantime that anyone who subscribes can have the free ebook bundle - just contact me and i'll point you in the right direction.

For this to work, you are going to need to watch the videos on this channel. If you like them, share them with other people. If you dislike them, tell me why and what you'd like to see on here. This is not a TV channel: this is YouTube. We're supposed to be interacting, and when we interact, we all have a better experience, we improve YouTube and everyone will get a better experience.

Here's a clickable list of my ten most popular videos. Take a look at them and let me know what you think.

I realise this is very probably an example of trying too hard and coming across as desperate. If anyone can crack the problem of attempting to promote one's stuff without this happening, i'd love to hear from you. I'd also like to point out that if i wasn't like this, i would probably have a 9-5 job and had a girlfriend at school. Embarrassing pleas like this go with the territory. However, looking on the "bright" side, i'm sure this will sink without trace.

There is a problem with things getting too up their own anuses here of course, and i also have a tendency in that direction. It will be replaced by one which is considerably less like that in the neighbouring future.

Having said all that, i have to say i'm fairly keen on the thumbnail and it's a shame it's so small, so here it is again:

These are eight of the ten most popular videos on the channel, ignoring Liz drinking her wee as i usually do. Incidentally, a new wee video will appear soon. Three of those eight videos are about current affairs, at least another three are about appearance, one is of us snogging and the final one was picked up by South Asian people interested in Yoga. That probably gives me some indication of what i need to do. It suggests that my vague idea of doing "Does my bum look big in this?" and a video of me twerking while talking about Heidegger would indeed be popular. However, there are various others in the pipeline, including "Am i my brain?", at least two more cooking videos and loads more science stuff, which is unfortunately not very popular. There's also "Herbalism as cybernetics".

Hmm, i should make a list of these. Why not here? A numbered list in fact, to keep track of how many ideas i have - these are only working titles: